{"id":16074,"date":"2015-09-10T18:36:57","date_gmt":"2015-09-10T10:36:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/scientists-revel-in-latest-pluto-close-ups\/"},"modified":"2015-09-10T18:36:57","modified_gmt":"2015-09-10T10:36:57","slug":"scientists-revel-in-latest-pluto-close-ups","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/scientists-revel-in-latest-pluto-close-ups\/","title":{"rendered":"Scientists revel in latest Pluto close-ups"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"This
This synthetic perspective view of Pluto, based on the latest high-resolution images to be downlinked from NASA\u2019s New Horizons spacecraft, shows what you would see if you were approximately 1,100 miles (1,800 kilometers) above Pluto\u2019s equatorial area, looking northeast over the dark, cratered, informally named Cthulhu Regio toward the bright, smooth, expanse of icy plains informally called Sputnik Planum. The entire expanse of terrain seen in this image is 1,100 miles (1,800 kilometers) across. The images were taken as New Horizons flew past Pluto on July 14, 2015, from a distance of 50,000 miles (80,000 kilometers). Credit: NASA\/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory\/Southwest Research Institute<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Fresh views from NASA\u2019s New Horizons spacecraft released Thursday reveal diverse landscapes on Pluto, possible dune fields, mysterious channels, and nitrogen ice flows in greater detail than ever before, but it is just the tip of the iceberg as data from the far-flung probe resumes streaming back to Earth.<\/p>\n

Parts of the dwarf planet appear to show jumbled mountainous features \u2014 a type of topography scientists call \u201cchaos terrain\u201d \u2014 at the edge of a vast ice field the size of Texas informally named Sputnik Planum. The discovery bears similarities to Jupiter\u2019s icy moon Europa, which is encrusted in a global ice sheet likely covering a liquid water ocean.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe surface of Pluto is every bit as complex as that of Mars,\u201d said Jeff Moore, leader of the New Horizons geology, geophysics and imaging team at NASA\u2019s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California. \u201cThe randomly jumbled mountains might be huge blocks of hard water ice floating within a vast, denser, softer deposit of frozen nitrogen within the region informally named Sputnik Planum.\u201d<\/p>\n

Liquid water cannot exist at Pluto\u2019s frigid temperatures, according to scientists, but there may be a subsurface sea of liquid nitrogen lurking beneath Sputnik Planum\u2019s icy veneer.<\/p>\n

\"In
In the center of this 300-mile (470-kilometer) wide image of Pluto from NASA\u2019s New Horizons spacecraft is a large region of jumbled, broken terrain on the northwestern edge of the vast, icy plain informally called Sputnik Planum, to the right. The smallest visible features are 0.5 miles (0.8 kilometers) in size. This image was taken as New Horizons flew past Pluto on July 14, 2015, from a distance of 50,000 miles (80,000 kilometers). Credit: NASA\/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory\/Southwest Research Institute<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cNew images also show the most heavily cratered \u2014 and thus oldest \u2014 terrain yet seen by New Horizons on Pluto next to the youngest, most crater-free icy plains,\u201d NASA said in a press release. \u201cThere might even be a field of dark wind-blown dunes, among other possibilities.\u201d<\/p>\n

Imagery from New Horizons show an area of mysterious closely-aligned ridges, which appear the way sand dunes on Earth look from space.<\/p>\n

\u201cSeeing dunes on Pluto \u2014 if that is what they are \u2014 would be completely wild, because Pluto\u2019s atmosphere today is so thin,\u201d said William McKinnon, deputy lead of the mission\u2019s geology, geophysics and imaging team from Washington University in St. Louis. \u201cEither Pluto had a thicker atmosphere in the past, or some process we haven\u2019t figured out is at work. It\u2019s a head-scratcher.\u201d<\/p>\n

The latest pictures also show Pluto\u2019s atmosphere is complex, NASA said, with many more haze layers than realized. Turning up the contrast in images obtained from Pluto\u2019s night side show the haze creating a soft dusky glow over dark landscapes, illuminating regions scientists did not expect to see.<\/p>\n

\"This
This 220-mile (350-kilometer) wide view of Pluto from NASA\u2019s New Horizons spacecraft illustrates the incredible diversity of surface reflectivities and geological landforms on the dwarf planet. The image includes dark, ancient heavily cratered terrain; bright, smooth geologically young terrain; assembled masses of mountains; and an enigmatic field of dark, aligned ridges that resemble dunes; its origin is under debate. The smallest visible features are 0.5 miles (0.8 kilometers) in size. This image was taken as New Horizons flew past Pluto on July 14, 2015, from a distance of 50,000 miles (80,000 kilometers). Credit: NASA\/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory\/Southwest Research Institute<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cPluto is showing us a diversity of landforms and complexity of processes that rival anything we\u2019ve seen in the solar system,\u201d said Alan Stern, principal investigator for the New Horizons missions from the Southwest Research Institute of Boulder, Colorado. \u201cIf an artist had painted this Pluto before our flyby, I probably would have called it over the top \u2014 but that\u2019s what is actually there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nearly two months after its July 14 encounter with Pluto, New Horizons resumed beaming back images stored on the spacecraft\u2019s data recorders Sept. 5 after a hiatus to focus in returning other datasets. The latest images double the area of Pluto pictured at 1,300-foot (400-meter) resolution, according to NASA.<\/p>\n

The new downlinks include full image files to improve on the compressed versions sent back immediately after the July 14 flyby, which took New Horizons within 7,800 miles (12,500 kilometers) from Pluto.<\/p>\n

Images still to be broadcast from New Horizons include the sharpest photos from the flyby, and pictures to fill out a global mosaic at higher resolution than views released before now. Color imagery and composition data are also due to come back to Earth, but it will take until late 2016 for all the information to make it home.<\/p>\n

The transmission rate is just 2 kilobits per second at New Horizons\u2019 distance more than 3 billion miles from Earth.<\/p>\n

Scientists plan to release new raw images of Pluto\u2019s moon Charon and its tiny satellites Nix and Hydra on Friday.<\/p>\n

Email the author.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This synthetic perspective view of Pluto, based on the latest high-resolution images to be downlinked from NASA\u2019s New Horizons spacecraft, shows what you would see if you were approximately 1,100 miles (1,800 kilometers) above Pluto\u2019s equatorial area, looking northeast over the dark, cratered, informally named Cthulhu Regio toward the bright, smooth, expanse of icy plains […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2172,2174,2848],"class_list":["post-16074","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-charon","tag-new-horizons","tag-pluto"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16074"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16074"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16074\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}